


Welcome Home (Except)

by CC99trialanderrorgirl



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And a whole lot more from his husband, Biting, Brave Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes-centric, Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers Feels, Bucky has done some damn fine work in therapy, Bucky kicks Captain America out of there and drags Steve Rogers back into the light, Bucky loves and lusts after him through it all, Coming back to oneself, Emotional Sex, Freedom, Happy Ending, M/M, Making Out, Married Sex, Masturbation, Peggy Carter (mentioned) - Freeform, Possessive Sex, Self-Acceptance, Steve Rogers Gets a Hug, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve finds his way back, You are enough. You are., be yourself, intimacy kink, reconnecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26849182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CC99trialanderrorgirl/pseuds/CC99trialanderrorgirl
Summary: Bucky Barnes has a secret.He jerks it to the idea of biting his husband’s neck.This wouldn’t be a problem, except he’s married to Captain America.Another secret?Bucky Barnes would much rather be married to Steve Rogers instead.This is the story of how Bucky helps Steve put aside the mask of Captain America and actually get what Steve Rogers wants for once in his damn life.Yeah, he’s a good husband like that.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 147





	Welcome Home (Except)

**Author's Note:**

> This is for anyone who has ever felt they had to prove something or like they weren't enough as they are. This is also for anyone who has ever been as emotionally vulnerable and brave as Bucky Barnes. I love you all, take care of yourselves out there and make sure you know how special you are. <3

It started when he was fifteen and Steve came storming back into the apartment after some fight. It had remained blessedly verbal, so Steve wasn’t beat up. In fact, the only physical sign the altercation had happened at all was the look in his eyes – blazing hot and so, so mesmerizing.

Bucky had been teetering on the edge for about two years by that point, but it was right then and there that he fell. He knew he was well and truly gone on his best friend when he found himself hunched in their cold little shower, pants hastily undone and fingers ringed tight around his shaft, lower lip caught between his teeth to keep himself quiet. He came harder and faster than he ever had that night, surreptitious and aching while Steve slept off his rage.

It became a thing after that, Bucky wanting Steve. He wanted him in his best Sunday suit. He wanted him with charcoal on his fingertips. And most of all, he wanted him with blood on his teeth, a snarl on his lips, and fire in his gaze. Steve came alive when he was angry, and Bucky burned for it.

Then all of a sudden Bucky found himself cold and alone in a war, and there was no Steve, and no sunshine, and no peace. He found friends, comrades, and they told each other stories about their lives back home. Bucky never mentioned Steve, not because he was embarrassed or ashamed, but because it was too sacred. When Bucky had nothing else to hold onto, he had his memories of Steve. His laughter, his anger, his unerring desire to do right. When he was captured at Azzano, Bucky held onto that.

_Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038._

Eyes closed, he pictured Steve: his blue-eyed, blonde-haired avenging angel.

And then all of a sudden, he was there. But not.

Steve was big and tall and broad and they were calling him Captain America.

It took Bucky three days to understand. He’s never admitted that, not once, not even to Steve.

After that, time speeds up in his mind. Snowfall, Zola, the Red Room, Pierce, guns and knives and ammo – it all bleeds together into one big, sickening carnival of colors and muted sounds cut through with piercing screams and clownish, sinister figures in the background. It makes him feel sick to think about it, so he doesn’t unless he’s in therapy or with Steve.

Steve wrapped around him makes him feel safe, makes him feel loved.

He and Steve kissed exactly once during the war, five nights after Bucky’s dramatic rescue at the hands of Captain America. Peggy Carter had taken one look at him in a burned out bar and had just shaken her pretty brunette head. Her fingers touched his as he was stepping out the door. Her nails were blood red – he remembers that detail – it is so, so _clear_ , even now. “He’s yours,” she’d whispered, and then her eyes tracked towards Gabe and she gave a little half smile.

“Oh,” Bucky had said, the façade of his customary eloquence having been torn down by Zola in his lab. “I-“

She cut him off with a kiss to the cheek. “Be good to him. I love him, too, but not the way you do.” She’d said the last part very deliberately. It was obvious, even to him in his addled state, that she needed him to understand, was making the effort to be very, very clear. She cut her eyes at Gabe once more, and smiled. “Really, Sergeant Barnes, he is very much all yours.”

After everything, he still remembers the feel of her creamy red lipstick on his cheek. He touched his fingertips to it as Steve caught up with him at the exit of the bar. The look in his eyes was fire, but somehow Bucky didn’t think it was directed at him. “Let’s go,” Steve had said then, and dragged Bucky by the too-wide sleeve of his uniform into the street. He didn’t let go when Bucky took a deep, shaky breath of night air. It was smoky and dirty and still so much clearer than the air was at the front. It stunk of charred flesh and tasted like muddied lead out there. Here, by comparison, it was almost sweet. Bucky remembers, that, too. Even Pierce didn’t manage to pry out this memory.

Steve pushed him backwards into a darkened alley, followed him right up against the wall. Slotted their bodies together, just pushed his right up against Bucky’s, knowing he would – could – take it, and Bucky melted. Steve moved first, pushing his lips against Bucky’s with a frantic urgency. It was clear he didn’t know how to use them, mostly because he’d had them for less than a year. Bucky tasted salt and realized the tears were his. Steve didn’t seem to care, just kept pressing and licking at the seam of their lips until their tongues were in each other’s mouths and Steve’s big hands were on his shoulders, his hips, holding him down and rutting them together, and Bucky just held on, fingers gripping tight at the sides Steve’s dress pants, and it was Steve who pressed in so, so close and muffled the sound when Bucky screamed.

The he said it – “I love you,” and the fire, the passion in his eyes when he said it almost had Bucky undone all over again, as if that were possible. The burn was unmistakable – Steve was angry about it. He loved Bucky so fiercely that it felt like anger to him. Bucky just reached out, grabbed Steve by the lapels, and yanked until he could get his mouth on his neck. He bit down the moment Steve cried out. Or, that’s how he understood it, then. He’s pretty sure it was the other way around, though – Steve cried out the moment he bit down.

And that’s it – that’s the moment Bucky thinks about now. Marries up the image of angry, tiny Steve with the sensation of biting down on big Steve’s neck, and it makes him come – _hard_ – every time. He hates himself for it, because he knows Steve would hate it. Steve spent his entire youth trying to prove he was enough – strong enough, tough enough, man enough. Bucky knows he would hate the idea of Bucky staking a claim like that, but he can’t help it. The idea of tiny Steve fighting him tooth and nail, and absolutely owning him, before giving up the front and letting Bucky see the vulnerability underneath? It’s so intimate it makes him want to die.

Bucky loves his husband. _Loves_ him. Is a little bit obsessed with him, even. Tony makes fun of him for it on the daily. But he doesn’t care, because Steve is amazing, and Bucky has him, and nothing else really matters.

Except.

Except Steve still does the thing where he tries to prove how big and tough and independent he is. He takes care of everyone else, and never lets anyone take care of him. Sometimes, not even Bucky. And that hurts, okay? Bucky has dropped every guard and wall he ever had and let Steve into his inner sanctum, time and time again. He’s told Steve every embarrassing fantasy he has (excepting The One). He’s let Steve see him sick, crazed, lost. He’s let Steve hold him as he cries, brought Steve to more than one therapy session (only when his therapist thought it was appropriate, of course), and just generally lets him see the rushing river of emotion that lives just below the surface of his skin.

It’s an underground river full of rapids and shot through with stalactites and the current is so fast it’s practically a tattoo, a drumbeat stretched tight underneath his dermis. It _hurts_. And listen, Bucky has friends, and he is a good friend to them in turn. But he is exactly as vulnerable as he needs to be with them. Other people don’t see his deep shit, okay? It’s just Steve who sees that river. Only Steve – _ever_.

But Steve…Steve never quite seems able to reciprocate the same depth of connection, and sometimes, that sucks. He thinks that maybe that’s why the fantasy has been so enduring. And okay, it was just a split second, and Bucky knows it’s probably stupid to have made so much out of it. He knows that Steve probably just is that perfect, that controlled, and that righteously angry. He knows that he’s probably misinterpreting that night. Steve didn’t come because Bucky bit him – Steve just happened to come _when_ Bucky bit him. There’s a difference.

Except.

Except Bucky saw the look in Steve’s eyes. And it looked like anger. Except anger in the throws of orgasm doesn’t make sense. So it _had_ to be something else…

Bucky doesn’t currently have much of a job. So, like, he’s been spending most of his days lately obsessively going over what he remembers of that night. He tries to sort out the truth from the interpretations. It’s hard – it’s not like there’s anybody he can ask. Nobody else was there that night. Even Peggy had gone back inside before Steve made his move. (Bucky had even gone to the nursing home to ask her one day. She was very adamant, very sure that she did not know.) So really, he doesn’t know what he saw, except that _he thought it saw it_.

He thought he saw Steve keen and cry out and come at the idea of being owned. And he’d really, really like to see that again.

It’s important to note, even in the confines of his own mind, that Bucky loves his husband with all his heart and considers them to have an extremely healthy, loving, and intimate relationship. He does. It’s just…he _misses_ Steve, sometimes. It’s like this ache. There’s a place inside him, so deep, that’s full of Steve. Sometimes he’s afraid Steve doesn’t have that same cavern carved out in his chest cavity, that it’s not filled with Bucky the way that Bucky’s is filled with Steve.

Sometimes, Bucky misses the angry little guy from before who would tell you exactly what he was thinking. No confusion, no games. But it’s not like Steve is playing games now. So that’s not right, either, is it? Besides, little Steve wouldn’t ever back down or give ground or admit to anything he saw as a weakness. And he’d damn well for sure have considered letting Bucky bite him like some kind of alpha wolf to be a weakness. Even if he wanted it, he’d never admit it.

Wait.

Bucky is only good at a few things these days - 80% of them involve guns or knives, and about 10% goes to cooking. But one thing the post-Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes is really, truly _great_ at? Admitting tough stuff that he’d rather not admit.

He can face shit head on with the best of them. He’s a goddamn living master class in it.

And maybe, just maybe, he can help Steve learn to be more open and honest with himself, too. After all, that’s what husbands are for, right? Bucky is pretty sure husbands are for: telling secrets to, fucking in ways that you’d never admit you’re into if it were anyone else, and snuggles at 2am.

He already gives Steve snuggles and tells him all his secrets.

He can _do_ this!

He can show Steve that accepting himself – his whole self – can be at _least_ as liberating as it is scary. So he hatches a plan.

It doesn’t go well.

In fact, plans A – U go really, really badly. Plan L actually ends with Steve making up an excuse and jumping out of a moving car to avoid talking about his feelings. Tony has to patch up the friction burns on his suit later. It’s a whole thing. This is _so_ much worse than Bucky thought.

How could no one else have noticed this? Other people knew Steve in the 21stcentury, way before he did. Why did no one else _help_ him?

Oh, that’s right, because his husband is prickly, stubborn, and the best damn liar Bucky has ever seen. (People are always surprised to hear that about Captain America. They shouldn’t be.)

In the end, it’s plan Z that works: pure honesty, spoken in the dead of night while Steve is inside him in their bed and the only sounds are the gentle squeak of the mattress springs and the breeze slowly wafting in from the opened curtains. They’re half-bathed in moonlight but it’s definitely too dark to really see much but indistinct shapes; it’s like a blanket over them. It’s the safest place Bucky can think of for either of them to have this conversation, and really, he only delayed it until Plan Z because he didn’t want to cause Steve – or himself – embarrassment.

And this is going to be really fucking embarrassing.

It goes like this:

Bucky shuts his eyes and screws up his courage and tells Steve about his fantasy, how it got all jumbled up after their one pre-crash kiss, and how he’d really like to try it anyhow.

Steve just freezes, and for the longest time, Bucky is just staring into nothingness, Steve wrapped all around him from behind but so, so far away. Then he speaks.

His voice is hoarse and, fuck, this is what Bucky has been waiting for his whole life. Honesty in a broken-down place with the love of his life.

“Honestly, Buck? Hearing that you liked me like that, _wanted_ me like that?” Steve sighs. “You’re right – years ago I would have been angry. But, now, with the benefit of age? It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard. I think the truth is I always wanted to hear that from you, always wanted that from you. I guess I was running from it. From you. I’m sorry."

He didn’t deny it.

He didn't even _try_ to deny it.

Bucky is _floored_.

“You, um, want it?”

Steve’s breath is so loud it’s practically visible in the moonlight.

“I thought that you would never want that from me. I thought I had to be strong, all the time, forever, because I thought it’s what everyone – even you – would expect. I’m sorry, Bucky. I should’ve had more faith in you, given you the chance. I’ve been a shitty husband, Buck, and you don’t deserve that.”

“No, Steve, no,” Bucky immediately soothes him, reaching back to run a hand over Steve’s bare flank. “You’re not a shitty husband. You never were.” He pauses, breathes. This part might hurt, but it’s something Steve needs to hear. “Sometimes, though, I think you forget that I married Steve Rogers – not Captain America. I never wanted that guy. I didn’t want him in the war, and I sure as hell don’t want him in my bed. I want – have always wanted – you. Just as you are.”

Steve’s sharp intake of breath and the slight shaking of the bed tells Bucky he’s crying. Good. Catharsis is supposed to make you cry. Or at least, that’s what his therapist says every time he bawls his eyes out in her office. Maybe some people are different, have their epiphany quietly. But Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers have always been loud, collision-course messes.

“I would have let you fuck me, back then,” Bucky says quietly.

Behind him, Steve freezes.

“I would have let you hold me down, use my body to prove every point you ever needed to make to yourself, to the world.”

Steve’s exhale is sharp as ice.

“And I would have loved every second of it,” Bucky swears. “But Steve? You don’t have anything to prove to yourself or to the world. And certainly not to me. I’m your husband. So I’m asking you. What do _you_ want? Steve Rogers, the man. Not the symbol, not the fighter. Just…you. My husband. What can I give you to make you feel as good as I can?”

Steve is breathing much more heavily now, it’s been increasing in pace and volume the whole time Bucky’s been speaking. He also can’t help but notice that Steve is once again hard inside him.

Steve is breathing so audibly.

The silence stretches.

Time blurs.

Bucky waits Steve out.

When he finally speaks, it’s a whisper and an echo of a time long past. The voice of someone Bucky hasn’t heard in a long time, and has sorely missed. Steve Rogers opens his mouth and says, messy and brilliant:

“No one has ever fucked me. But I’d like to feel what it’s like to have my husband do it.”

Bucky chokes on air.

“No shit, Stevie? Are you serious?”

But it’s a mostly rhetorical question, because Steve is hard as nails inside Bucky now, and Bucky is trembling with want and dripping all over the sheets.

“Make a mess of me, Barnes,” Steve rasps. “Mark me up, baby.”

Bucky is beside himself with want and disbelief.

“I never thought I’d get this…” Bucky murmurs.

“I’m sorry,” Steve answers just as quietly. “I gave myself to you in our wedding ceremony. I should have given you my whole self every day of our marriage, too.”

“It’s not too late,” Bucky says quietly.

“Take me.”

The words burn Bucky from the inside out.

All of a sudden their bed is a blur of desperate movement. Steve pulling out of Bucky. Bucky making a mad grab for the bottle of lube, lost to the darkness of the bedroom floor. Bucky convulsing when he pulls himself upright only to be met with the sight of Steve, flat on his back with his knees hiked up to his armpits, blushing and determined. Needy. Vulnerable.

Bucky opens him up with unsteady fingers. Steve starts crying halfway through. Bucky kisses away the tears and lines himself up with shaking hands. He presses forward.

Steve keens, long and loud and mesmerizing.

“Steve, Steve, Steve,” Bucky says as he fucks him slow and deep and so, so possessive.

Steve is beyond words.

It’s like he’s feeling for the first time, Bucky can see it in the way his eyes are screwed shut tight, in the line of his shoulders, in the tremor in his abs. This is Steve Rogers, broken down to his primary pieces. And it’s Bucky who he’s letting take him apart.

Fuck.

He’s gonna come.

Bucky increases his pace, frantic to get Steve there before him. The increased stimulation is clearly a revelation to Steve. He’s chanting something nonsensical. Bucky imagines it might be “own me,” but then realizes – almost too late – that Steve is begging, almost non-verbal in his arousal. He’s saying, “ _bite me_.”

Almost without conscious thought, Bucky leans in and scrapes his teeth along the underside of Steve’s jaw. The new angle and the rasp of Bucky’s mouth have Steve screaming outright. Bucky hopes the neighbors hear. He hopes _everyone_ hears.

This is Steve Rogers – his husband – willingly dropping all his carefully built guard walls and letting Bucky see the small, wispy, blood-red beat of him beneath.

“Stevie,” Bucky groans, and God, he hasn’t called Steve that since 1943. Why the fuck _not_?

How could they both have gotten so lost? Just as quickly as the thought comes, it dissipates. Because it doesn’t matter. They’re here now, just the two of them. Steve and Bucky, Bucky and Steve. Stripped of their personas, their roles, their defenses. Nothing left but two bodies, two hearts beating as one. Just two entities in the cosmos, coming together in beautiful, gorgeous synchronicity; tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap. Bucky can feel Steve’s heartbeat in his _throat_. He can feel Steve’s body slowly tightening. Now is the moment.

“Mine, Stevie,” Bucky growls, and bites Steve hard on the side of his throat.

Steve opens his eyes and they’re wild blue, like anger, like passion. They’re _Steve’s_. He screams – wild, out of control, primal and embarrassing and nothing even in the neighborhood of Captain America approved.

Bucky creams the _second_ it happens.

God, he’s waited his whole unnaturally long life for this: Steve Rogers, willingly undone underneath him, the Captain America persona well and truly evicted from their marriage.

“Welcome home,” Bucky says when they've both come back down to earth, and Steve offers up the most beautiful, watery smile Bucky has ever fucking seen.

“Thanks, Buck,” he says. “It’s good to be back.”


End file.
